Loss of Focus

When my young adult son moved to the West Coast three months ago, among the wreckage he left behind was a 2002 Ford Focus. It's easy enough to shred his unpaid bills, but I have a view of his junker out my kitchen window every day. There are worse things to look at than a GM rustbucket, I guess, but this car thing has gotten personal.

For months I ignored it. But increasingly it's become a dirty, daily reminder of the circumstances that brought it to my doorstep: I moved it here during his hospitalization last July. The come-apart was cinematic in scope, featuring glass breakage, a three-day disappearance, and mystery abrasions to his extremities.

I'm not certain what triggered this episode, but I suspect pills, weed and a steady contempt for his legitimate meds had something to do with it. While he was at large, I began to worry that he'd kill somebody in his car. So I used my spare key and just took it. What would I rather deal with: someone's accident-shattered life or another of his irrational tirades? 

Last summer I had high hopes for his dual diagnosis treatment. Ditto for the three sober living situations since. But sobriety's just not in the cards for him right now. As long as he's out there, I know I can count on the disease to cheerfully refund his misery. So I plan to outwait it. 

Meanwhile, there's this eyesore in my driveway. 

How, in less than a year, does someone turn a gently driven sedan into a crackmobile? Not only was the transmission locked up, the console was ripped out, the grill fell off the front, the body has been beaten with a baseball bat, and cigarette burns have made Swiss cheese out of the cloth seats. On humid days, does the feral smell come from the rat droppings or "product" still clinging to the interior? 

Still, I continued to store his car thinking, "Pretty soon he's going to get his act together and he'll need a car to go to work," or "Once he has a job, he'll save up enough to fix it himself."

Please. As Spanky used to say on The Little Rascals, “Wish cotton was a monkey.”

It dawned on me that I myself have been as stuck as that car while he yo-yo's between treatment and relapse. I've felt unable to move forward, useless to anybody, badly beaten up and sorely in need of an interior detail. 

Last week I couldn't look at it one more day. I called and donated the car to charity. I was never so glad to see the back of anything in my life.

Removing the car opened up space in my driveway, but not nearly as much space as it made in my head. I have heard it put this way: like his Ford, I can let go, or be dragged.